Hi, this my guide to ANL. There are a few bugs in this game that annoy me to no end because they're always tripped by newbies and i hope this guide will cut down on those (and maybe get the bugs fixed by someone who can). If you're new to ANL you can safely preserve the learning process by limiting yourself to learning the basics and I will separate basic how-to from general strategy with spoiler captions on the latter. If you mention something I missed i will add it.

Etiquette

General Rule #1 - Don't join or don't quit. If you want a different leader, ask the host for one.
GR #2 - Loyalist only. If you choose any other faction you will be forced random. Just ask the host to change you if you make this mistake anyway.
GR#3 - If you MUST leave ask the host to deslot you so you will not break their make.
GR#4 - None of these rules apply when 'Use map settings' is not labeled/checked. See Bug #1 for more info.

Bugs

Bug #1: - Breaking make - If a maker uses map setting the map forces you to choose loyalist, in a way. IF you chose anything else you'll just be forced random loyalist. The bug here is that if someone leaves the make session the slot they were in bugs out and anyone who joins that slot is forced random. There may be in game problems associated with this but I've never encountered them. So this is very frustrating to have to explain to newbies who join, don't get their Drake/Elf/Dark Mage/etc., and leave and/or rejoin up to several times in my experience hosting. Only workaround is to remake.

Bug #2 Using the in-game R-click help file tends to cause game-breaking OOS errors. Don't use it. Refer to this document. This seems to also occur with any in game menu used after changing a side's controller. Not a good idea to use :nosaves on this scenario.

Basic How-to

1. If you've never played before recruit peasants first turn.
2. Use peasants to change the landscape by opening the right click menu option.. You can build mines, farms, water, forest castles, villages and upgrade villages to universities. Cave tiles (not Cave floor) can be 'smashed' into a 'hill tile' on which you can build a mine. There is one in each spider cave and 2 in enemy territory.
3. Mines cost 25gp ea. & generate 2gp for being a village and 4 extra each turn you have a peasant on them at the beginning of each turn. (e.g. peasant dies: no gold) and are built on hills or mountains.
4. Farms are free, generate 3gp every other turn (Harvest/replant, occurs beginning of turn), and are made on grass tiles.
5. Enemy units can destroy castles/keeps, villages/uni, farms and mines. Except for a mines, a peasant must clean up the area before rebuilding.
6. Mages on universities can research mining/farming or warfare. Mining/farming increase the money you make from either respectively and warfare allows you to recruit a new loyalist unit. Once you tell a mage to research all mages will do that until you tell them to research something else. Every successful research increases the necessary points to get another. First requires 4 except mining which takes 5.
7. Leaders on universities can preform diplomacy which can be used to give one point of tech or 20gp to a player you have more research than or a dwarf/elf unit to recruit (Fighter, thunderer, ulfzerker and defender/Archer, fighter, shaman, scout). Leaders must use diplomacy every turn. Dwarves/elves always take 4 turns.
8. You cannot build on road tiles.

Common Abbreviations - It is common practice for players to use single letter abbreviations to denote future upgrades to let each other know exactly what they plan to build and where.

W - Water
F - Forest
C - Castle
V - Village

Best Strategy

Spoiler:

Split mining and farming between the two players of the north/south sides.

P1&4 are optimal for famring because they can use the mages recruited as defense as well as research and farmers should invest in research first P's 1&4, if using this strategy would be better served by a white mage leader than a Lt for dps vs. undead and can use mages to research Heavies once skeletons show up on the scene.

P2&3 will be best served by using mining and building lots of mines as quickly as possible. Take advantage of Lt.'s 6 moves to use the given village as a uni and be able to both recruit and research every turn. If you kill the spiders theres a tile capable of being mined in the caves.

You will need a moat. I personally prefer to chop down the trees and make a straight line between the swamps while planting forests on the other side. I've seen some people build moats around the forests and most don't bother planting forests on the opposite side of the moat.

for north and south side defense put a village on either side of the swamp outside the guardian L2's. Stick a melee type unit capable of ZoCing the influx to protect miners. HIs, Dwarves, promoted peasants, rescued L2's etc. Rotate units as needed for healing and killshots.

P1&2 are best served by swaping Drake & Bird. Bird is weak to impact, Drake is weak to pierce and undead are weak to fire.

Other strategies.

Spoiler:

Some people recruit mages first turn to help attack the spider. In general this is a poor economic decision but I've seen people successfully take out both spiders and the guard to make a non-leader white mage right off the bat. This requires some minor planning with the other players to arrange and can be easily foiled by [censored] rolls vs. the spider even at optimal ToD and traits.

Diamond defense: This is essentially making a full hex moat around the initial camp and building a a bunch of villages. It's a very effective strategy to survive till turn 25 but it's kind of slow if you want to go on the offensive and the economic development isn't as fast as mines and researched farms. Use swmaps as corner points for the moat hes. Optionally plant forests on the opposite side of the moat. Build your villages before all other development because they are critical to financing the whole thing. Using this strategy requires cooperation between all players.

Holing up in the cave. This is an effective noob strategy for surviving to turn 25. It has the worst economic development rate and unless all players do it then you are going to pretty much shaft the other players on the map by ignoring your corner of defense. . Basically it's just moving your leader and units into the north/south spider caves building a castle there and making a moat outside.

I used to build a full length moat that went all the way up to the guard and just have one village but that tended to feed too many kills to one unit at a time as well as constricting movement about the area and making any of the mines across the moat inaccessible.

Some things I'd like to see in ANL in the future.

1. Dwarves being able to mine and elves being able to plant forests.
2. Change win turn to 30 and add L3's on turn 23.

Last edited by Euthanatos93 on March 11th, 2010, 6:09 am, edited 2 times in total.

Yes, it is possible to rush an undead ai with mages (and mages only), but only if two players cooperate on the assault. That way you gain a ready made castle and lots of space to get your economy running. Quite easy to camp out there, its just two chokepoint fights, and since you are cooperating with another player, each player gets to defend one entrance. Absolutely no need to mix units. The location is actually so well defended, that you won't even need to build a moat (and you won't want one, because once you go into the offense, it would only hinder your progress).

You really don't want a shock tropper for such a bum rush strategy they're weak to impact and a white mage would prove more effective. Also, getting a unit capable of defending that chokepoint may prove difficult Since you pretty much spend all your money on mages and generate no income.

Errr, so let me get this straight, a 35 hp white mage, who can two hit walking corpses with a 3 strike magical attack and has no retaliation to speak of, is favorable to my 49 hp when quick Shock Trooper who can 1 hit a walking corpse from dawn to dusk.... because he only has 10% Impact resistance?

I just won the "A new land" map! I've spent a few hours tryn' out different stuff and figuring out how the map works. It was quite challenging, but i managed to win without making a single peasant on any side.

I don't think mage leaders would be possible, you need high damage melee in order to get retaliation kills, if you only get 3 kills a turn (2 from the 4 mages and one from boss) you will be swamped in a sea of level 0 units, retaliation kills are essential.

It may have been better to send a swordsmen leader at the undead due to it's higher hp (no need to be quick) and more blunt resistance. But then it might be necessary to wait until day for the assault, or lose a mage, because of the skeleton guard.

The battle drags out a bit because peppy has to save himself and thus is not able to kill his orc leader right away, and is muscled into waiting for reinforcements.

If anyone wants to try this, a tip from me would be the computer is allowed to make level 1 units starting on turn 7, so plan accordingly.

I had an interesting game of ANL after reading your guide. Never played the map entirely through.

We did it with 3 players, leaving Player 4's spot empty. However, Player 3 used Player 4's keep as if he was playing his side.

I was Player 1, and used your moat strategy. I connected the swamps on the western front with water, backing it up with forests. I then recruited each turn with my hero and put diplomacy points towards an elvish fighter. I mostly farmed my way to recruit them, building one university and a mage to research upgraded farms twice.

I stuck my fighters in the forests I made and eventually built a mine on the northeast mountain for extra income. Grabbed the level 2 gryphon mid-way for extra fighting force.

Player 2 had a mixed mining farm strat that involved quickly getting the level 2 Drake in the north and sticking around the northeast to defend his mines/outstretched farms. He built his own moat to hold of the east side.

Player 3 used both keeps to defend the south end. He farmed aggressively and researched dwarf fighters really early. He was able to recruit 4 fighters right after he got enough diplomacy points towards them.

We got hit bad our first and second night, but clinched it as soon as we spread out more and held the chokepoints.

Overall, I thought it was interesting how we each had a different strat that worked well together. It wasn’t mistake-free by any means, but fun game nonetheless.

I find it more useful in the beginning (turns6-15 or so) when i'm still developing my economy and basic northside defense to prevent units from being able to flood in. When they arrive they have to line themselves up across the moat and wait for more if they're going to attack with more than one unit at a time so with the trees up it takes them one extra turn to move units into place which gives me just enough time to properly respond and position a ZoC unit which are in short supply early in the game.

And despite the age of the thread I don't think it's any less useful to new ANL players. I do hope that the faction= and faction_from_recruit= keys are fixed in 1.8. I crash the lobby too much to find out myself yet but I do think that most of the OOS error should be fixed because I believe they're all generated from side triggered event keys which were not mp-safe in 1.6.

Euthanatos93 wrote:I do hope that the faction= and faction_from_recruit= keys are fixed in 1.8.

No, faction_from_recruit= remains broken with 1.8. About one month ago, I entered the bug as Gna bug 17407. A few days later, silene fixed the bug in trunk. But 1.8 is older than trunk and will never get the fix.

Euthanatos93 wrote:General Rule #1 - Don't join or don't quit. If you want a different leader, ask the host for one.
GR #2 - Loyalist only. If you choose any other faction you will be forced random. Just ask the host to change you if you make this mistake anyway.
GR#3 - If you MUST leave ask the host to deslot you so you will not break their make.
GR#4 - None of these rules apply when 'Use map settings' is not labeled/checked. See Bug #1 for more info.

I had much trouble with this bug. Players like to join and quit. I think that a player chooses its Elvish Captain, sees that the Elvish Captain never appears in the lobby, then quits.

To work around this bug, I made a custom era with Only Loyalists. I have created ANL games with this era, and it seems to work well. I have not shared the era with other players. This is the _main.cfg: